


How to Lean into Paradise

by Noxchild



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akekita, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kitaake, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-05-08 14:25:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14696054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noxchild/pseuds/Noxchild
Summary: A chance encounter - a coincidence of uncanny fate that keeps them revolving around each other - and two young men, one with wild dreams and hopes threatening to seep out of him with every pore, the other who smiles and keeps hush and tries to let nothing in. Still, they can't help but fall in love with each other, and adore.(OR: a series of sweet, non-chronological moments in the lives of Goro Akechi and Yusuke Kitagawa from boyhood to everything after: friendship, first kiss, marriage and camaraderie - and yes, the bonds of friendship they share with those alongside their journey. Expect no cruelty, no arbitrary suffering or despair - only the love between an artist and a detective, and the world that lies beyond.)





	1. Shall We Hear The Cormorants Cry?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Goro and Yusuke are four thousand kilometres from home, packing up for the eighth time, and there's still a year left on their stay in China. Goro cooks, and forgets his thirtieth birthday. Yusuke paints. The family downstairs shows them every kind of favour. Life goes on, and so do they.
> 
> (OR: in a calmer, kinder world, Goro Akechi is a detective-turned-writer, and Yusuke Kitagawa is a famous artist. They are married, and go on many small adventures together. This is their life.)

There's a week left on the lease on their apartment in Dali, and Goro is already thinking about packing. Happily it came furnished, so all he has to worry about are the clothes and linens and the various goods they've been mailing back to their address in Setagaya-ku. Akira and Futaba have been alternating package delivery to the house, which Goro is immensely grateful about. Akira is a connoisseur of hot drinks and also takes care of the garden in his spare time; he's sure to appreciate the medallion of puerh tea Goro shipped over in his last package, while Futaba is a pilferer of every kind of treat and snack and confectionery. The gifts he intended for everyone back home will probably be half-eaten before they reach anybody else's hands.

Does Yusuke know they're leaving soon? His husband lays sprawled out on the bed, snoring oblivious as a child when Goro gets up at around eight-thirty. He brushes his teeth and washes his face in their small bathroom, inspects a new pimple on the side of his jaw. Where did  _that_ come from?

He looks back at the bed and contemplates sinking back into the clean sheets, listening to Yusuke's heartbeat a little longer, not having to edit the five thousand word chapter he finished last night. But he's already buttoning up the cotton shirt he slipped on, combing his hair and taking his wallet out of the drawer. It's become a daily routine, this; Goro's lack of desire to cook in the morning, and Yusuke's inability to do anything practical before ten am.

It's been like this for nearly two years now. While they've been living in China they've taken up great lungfuls of fresh air, so much it's a miracle anyone else has the time to be luxurious and indolent.

"I'm going out," Goro says into the cool air of the room. Yusuke turns onto his side and yawns, which is a kind of response. Goro closes the door behind him and goes out.

* * *

There are markets like this in Tokyo, of course, but none only a five minute walk from the house, and only a few selling fresh vegetables and morning-caught fish and jianbing cheek to cheek. Goro buys four steaming baozi for three kuai a piece and browses a bit longer while the buns fog up the little plastic bag he's holding them in. He has no intention of buying anything else; with how conveniently located the market is, he finds himself wandering there three or four times a day as a part of his daily walk.

Yusuke is up and out on the balcony when Goro returns home, having somehow compressed his legs into a lotus position in a plastic chair too small for his long limbs. He's sketching, which at this time of day is a good sign. An artist is a temperamental creature, after all, and Goro has seen Yusuke go days, almost a whole week, without once touching the pencil or brush - though he seldom lasts longer.

The kettle is simmering away in the kitchenette; Yusuke must have put it on after he left. Goro plates the baozi and makes tea, then approaches with offering in hand.  _Clink_ goes the porcelain plate and cup on the small fold-up table Yusuke uses to keep his supplies nearby. Goro studies him draw from over the shoulder for a while, then sighs and picks up one of the baozi and tears off a piece, holding it up to his husband's mouth.

Yusuke eats without looking, chews methodically and swallows; then blinks, and turns his head at last. "Darling, what did you just feed me?"

"Morning bao." Goro pecks him on the brow. "I'm surprised you're starting something new now. Won't that just complicate things?"

Yusuke hums. "I'd like to see where this'll take me first. There's still time."

"Oh, you," Goro breathes into his hair, slips arms over his shoulders. "So long as you remember who's been shipping all your paintings back to Tokyo in extra-extra-extra fragile packaging."

The laugh he gets in turn is airy as a mockingbird's. "Yes, and I'm exceptionally grateful for you doing so."

"At the very least," Goro says. "Let's have breakfast together."

"Let's," Yusuke agrees, and puts his sketchbook down.

* * *

Goro is halfway through his fifth novel, and even from several thousand kilometres away his editor is a nightmare. He may have switched the obsessive overtime drag of full-time detective work for the comfortable stay-at-home habits of a writer, but even in Yunnan Province life isn't leisurely. The deadline is four months away. It feels like four minutes.

You can do this, he tells himself. Edit this stupid chapter and be done with it. Do not leave your desk until -

"Goro," calls out the familiar croon of Granny Li from below. "Are you up yet?"

Would you look at that. It's eleven forty-five already, and time to make lunch.

"Coming," Goro says, and saves his progress before closing his laptop and putting it away. Xuexia and her friends like to run up and down the stairs in between their apartments, and sweet as they are, he's already lost several plates and a shirt to their perfidy, Yusuke a horsehair brush that cost ten thousand yen back home.

In retrospect Xuexia is lucky she's ten, or Goro would be much less sanguine about her blithe destruction of small property.

Granny Li is already scaling and gutting half a dozen small carp when Goro goes downstairs and finds her in the kitchen courtyard. "Fine with blood?" she teases when she sees him leaning against a column with crossed arms. "Your shirt is white. No good."

In Kashgar Goro was once put in the dubious position of having to collect blood from the throat of a sheep as it was bled to death by a local butcher. It was for a wedding, perfectly normal, but Yusuke wouldn't kiss him for three days after. Supposedly he could still smell the "iron" on Goro, and well, you know.

"What are we making?" he asks, making her smile. She sets him to prepping vegetables with the cleaver he's become astonishingly adept with over the years. Somewhere in a kitchen drawer back home their collection of extravagant Japanese chef’s knives lays dormant and unloved.

Granny Li always cooks for six or eight, but for now the adults are at work, Xuexia is at school, and so, on days like this Goro and Yusuke keep her company for an hour or two when they can.

She's always looked after them. The first week they moved in they kept to themselves, Goro trying to ignore the pearls of laughter from below, Xuexia playing hopscotch and a neighbour's baby learning to walk. Then one morning Granny Li knocked on their door with a container of freshly made tofu and a jar of pickled peppers and a smile that bore admonishment.

“What are you two feeding each other?” was the first thing she ever said to him. “Keep going like this and you'll collapse the next time there's a bad wind.”

Their journey to Dali City had been buffeted by rounds of train sickness, stomach flu, and a sudden bout of furious longing for the bed at home and a cup of Akira’s strongest coffee. They'd both been sick and feeble, surviving on instant noodles and cold baozi. Goro had gotten better first only because he'd fallen ill first.

He'd already been eighteen months in China then, and knew better to dissuade a grandmother or auntie from barging into his affairs when she wanted to. He stepped aside to let her in, and Granny Li saw Yusuke pale and shivering in bed, and  _tsked_.

The first dish she made for them was a soup containing a whole boiled chicken with a heap of garlic and ginger and ginseng, so many pungent aromas Goro nearly gagged when he took off the lid from the heaving pot to skim away the scum. But it was a health remedy, like the samgyetang he'd had in Seoul so many years ago, and a ladleful of broth alone woke Yusuke’s senses and sinuses and sent the nausea fleeing.

“Darling,” he'd told Goro, clutching his hand while Goro wiped his brow cool with a wet cloth. “I think I'm going to live.”

“You were never in any real danger,” Goro said, warming over nonetheless. He turned to face their saviour and said, “Grandmother, how can we repay you?”

“Eh,” she said. “Call me Granny. And come by downstairs later. There's a hog I need to butcher, and we don't have enough hands at home.”

Thus began their odd friendship with the Li family: Granny, the matriarch and chef; Xuexia, the rascal in braids; Meiying and Jiaqing, factory workers and Xuexia's parents; Donglei, the cousin in university, and Zhenghao, the son of a family friend who worked in another city. Yusuke could not spend all his time painting, and Goro definitely did  _not_ spend all his time writing. So they made do with remembering how to cook again (eating out almost every day in Chengdu for two months straight had been a poor idea) and Yusuke put his mahjong skills to use charming all the old ladies of the neighbourhood, and the sound of noisy children became as familiar to Goro’s ears as the chirp of cicadas in the afternoon when he was trying to nap.

Now in only a few days it's all going away, and he wonders if it's too late to renew their lease - or at the very least, find a quiet corner somewhere and put his head in his hands and cry.

This whole trip was ostensibly for Yusuke.  _Was_. They'd travelled before, got half the countries of the world stamped onto their passports, got new passports. Singapore - Korea - France - Mexico, for one wild and surreal fortnight where every other meal involved some kind of nopales. Opportunity itself embraced them with open arms when Goro quit his job as a detective and no longer had to plan vacations a year in advance. But even so, their lives revolved around Tokyo, almost around the same neighbourhoods they had grown up in. It was strange, and if he hadn't formed so many strong bonds over the years he would have thought it decidedly unlike him, staying in one place for so long. His childhood had made him a vagrant, moving from one town to another when he didn't fit in, didn't get along, didn't belong. After a while, it ceased to bother him.

He used to think detachment made him strong.

Then he found the job of his dreams at an age most would still be thinking about pocket money, a scholarship to a private school he could never have afforded on his emancipated teenager's salary, met Yusuke, and learned to play shogi.

It was history from then on.

Somewhere back in Tokyo Akira is still brewing for Leblanc part-time though he's a trained therapist with a client list as long as the Shinano River, and Futaba is still a packrat and boasting about completing eight-figure contracts in her pajamas while a Netflix marathon runs on medium volume on her other monitor. Ann is a superstar now, not just her parents' left hand but a designer and quote unquote influencer in her own right. She, cosmopolitan, travels for work more than anyone else but Tokyo is still her base of operations, and her customers are primarily Japanese.

 _Try this out!_  she sent in her last note surrounded artfully by perfumed hearts. She'd sent them samples of a new line of fruit-based scents called Takamaki Tango. So indulgent, so silly. So her.

In her department in Chiyoda-ku Makoto is now formally addressed as Inspector Nijima, and she stands tall and proud, but not alone. Ryuji, jack of all trades that he is, can do everything, and does. One year he takes up coaching for a middle school baseball team and nearly sends them to Nationals; the next he manages his mother's restaurant so she can recover from chemotherapy; the year after that he helps Akira out with his clientele by introducing animal therapy to the mix and they make a killing until Ryuji decides to move on after that too. It's fine. If restlessness was a vice, he's made it into a virtue.

Haru by now has been the CEO of Okumura Foods for a long time, and her push to rebrand it from Big Bang Burger's junky reputation to a company that sells the freshest, the most organic and local produce Japan can offer has made it a yuppie's darling, and her own light shines ever stronger with every fawning article on her personal style. She and Goro spoke on the phone recently. She's begun to attend  _omiai_.

And Hifumi, perhaps the first friend he ever had in life, has taken on several pupils. "I don't want to be the only female  _kishi_  anymore," she'd told him the last time they met face-to-face in the same old church in Kanda where they'd made acquaintances so many years ago.

"Let a generation of female masters reign," Goro agreed, and was pleased to see her smile.

And in all this fuss and nostalgia, in the bosom comfort of their friends' success and the knowing that they could be rung up in a heartbeat and they would come over for tea and dango and bantering as if nothing had changed in the decade they had known each other, Yusuke had lain down on the wooden flooring of the patio overlooking the Japanese garden - Goro's pride and joy - and murmured, "Darling, how would you feel if we went away from Japan for a while and lived somewhere else?"

Darling this, darling that. Everything Yusuke says to him is peppered with the kind of straightforward, shameless affection that would have sent Goro crawling away in embarrassment once. It took him two years of dating for him to admit his love - in the Western sense - while Yusuke just blinked at him, took his scarlet face in hand and said, "But of course! Aren't we living together, after all?"

Everything was simple when Yusuke proclaimed it so. And so Goro had feigned protest - neither of them spoke Chinese, they'd only ever been to Hong Kong, they'd be dropping all their business contacts for years, and much as their finances no longer bothered them, how were they sure to know they wouldn't be forgotten when they finally stepped back in Japan as foreigners, as wild men, as practitioners of morning tai chi?

And Yusuke had only said, "Haven't you ever wanted to see the mountains of Guilin in person?" and Goro was lost.

* * *

"Tart," Yusuke says when he takes in the first bite of braised carp and sour papaya. Then: "Oh! Spicy!"

Granny Li laughs. Like so many of the neighbourhood aunties she's completely enraptured by the ethereal being that is Kitagawa Yusuke on an empty stomach. "Where did you find him?" she'd asked Goro once, when they were doing the shopping together, looking for quality duck eggs to pickle and new shoes for Xuexia's birthday. "Are you sure he's even human?"

"Quite sure," Goro had said. "And if you find him peculiar now, you should know he was much worse as a teenager."

"I don't find him  _peculiar_ ," she retorted, slapping him lightly on the arm for daring to dress down his husband in public like this. "I find him  _extraordinary_."

Many things about Yusuke are extraordinary, such as the fact that despite their lunch spread is technically enough for five people, he consumes more than his fair share with gusto, his chopsticks so quick and precise you'd think he was born with them. Goro nibbles on the green beans with cured pork belly and startles when Granny Li puts a whole carp - pepper flakes, soup, papaya and all - in his rice bowl and tells him to eat up.

"Granny, I have to watch my weight," he says. Beside him, Yusuke is deboning a fish with his tongue. His white dress shirt remains spotless. Goro is in love with this man.

"And what for?" Granny scoffs. "You should eat as much as Zhenghao. Someone your age shouldn't be this skinny." She even puts fingers on his wrist for show. Her skin against Goro's is soft and papery, spotted here and there from years of sun, the protective visor she never uses. His is still firm, springy, resilient.

"I sit in front of my laptop all day and pretend to work," Goro says, which would make Sarashina-san's head explode back at Hayakawa Publishing if she heard him say that. Alas, it's true. He smiles. "Besides, I don't have  _this_ one's immaculate metabolism."

"Now, now, don't be cruel," Yusuke says, as if he isn't living his best life. Goro strips a soft chunk of fish from his bowl and offers it to him with a side of papaya and white rice. It's gone in a second.

"Ridiculous," Granny Li says. "Ridiculous. What will happen to you when I'm gone?"

"Who knows?" Goro tastes the carp for himself. Nice and tangy, not too hot; he's gotten better over the years when it comes to heat. "We're going to Guangxi next. Perhaps we'll find a Granny Li there too."

"Tsk!" she glowers. "As if."

* * *

Lunch ends around two pm because time is free in these parts. Yusuke kisses Goro on the cheek with pepper-hot lips, then goes back up either to nap or continue sketching. Goro stays to wash the dishes and help Granny Li with any chores she has lying around.

This is nice. He never had a grandmother, and apart from Sakura-san, who was a brief paternal figure when Goro was still the Detective Prince and had little to comfort himself with but a trip to Leblanc in his spare time, everyone who's become family over the years have been people in his own age group. It'll be the same when he returns to Japan, but now he can pretend otherwise.

"I'll miss you," Granny says out of nowhere. They're hanging laundry on the clothesline. Goro's hands are damp and spongy.

"You have Xuexia," he says. "And Zhenghao, and Donglei - "

"Xuexia and the others will be with me for the rest of my life," she says, which is an astonishing prediction to make but not inaccurate, considering her age. "I wish  _you_ would stay."

"I wish I could stay too," Goro says, and sees the shadow of Granny Li through the linens as she trembles, and his own.

* * *

Later, it's evening.

Yusuke makes dinner every night. It's their trade-off for Goro doing so much during the day. The artist prefers to work in an undisturbed manner for as long as possible through the waking hours, whereas the writer is a silly, distracted figure who often takes breaks in between sessions for the sake of avoiding burnout or whatever he calls it.

It's this damn novel of his. He shouldn't have picked such heavy material. Goro thought he'd left behind the days of feeling morose all the time, but now he gets paid to wallow in it. Crime novels are a pox upon the world.

(Akira will love it.)

Now he sits on the bed with his knees crossed, reading up on the news back in Japan while the rice cooker churns and Yusuke is cooking out on the patio and making idle conversation about how the mushrooms he's frying up are actually poisonous in their natural state, and if he doesn't remove the toxins properly they could  _both_ go into analyptic shock and -

Goro closes his laptop, lies down in bed, and contemplates death.

Dinner, of course, is wonderful. Yusuke is a natural cook, with a real interest in the quality of ingredients and the history of a dish. That Goro's become Granny Li's personal assistant and helper monkey is for convenience's sake. Yusuke likes to work; Goro does not. Ergo, him.

The mushrooms go down Goro's gullet with nary a hint of their deadly promise, much to his wallet's relief. There's rice as well, bitter melon soup, a salad of minced wild roots, tofu with chili oil. When one thinks about Futaba still feasting on konbini onigiri and oden as she did in her teens they could cry. One day Goro is going to teach that damn woman to take care of herself.

After, they both shower and brush their teeth carefully. Goro is second in line; he checks his breath because he's not a barbarian, doesn't leave the bathroom until he feels properly human and decent and prepared.

Then he steps back into the room and it's dark, Yusuke is taking him in hand and saying something soft and incredibly flattering about Goro's appearance and personality and things that would have made him laugh once to be complimented so sincerely and without pause, but now just make him feel as if he's home, even if it's not home, even if it's not Tokyo and Japan and so far from everything they've ever known, even if it's not fair they have to say goodbye so soon, and now.

Yusuke kisses him. Yusuke aligns his fingers to the ridges along Goro's spine and murmurs something about having the perfect muse, though it's been half a year since Goro last sat for him. Yusuke takes him to bed, presses Goro's back to the mattress and slides a knee in between his legs the way he likes. Yusuke cradles his head, kisses his brow, then on the mouth, then on the base of his neck, Yusuke unbuttons  _his_ shirt and says, "How lucky I am to have you."

And Goro closes his eyes and leans into it, because he deserves it.

* * *

Goro comes home the next late afternoon with tofu and taro and pork belly in hand, only find Xuexia sitting on the stairwell leading up to the apartment with a bloodied knee and her head buried in her arms.

Granny Li's gone out to see a friend. Yusuke is at the park. No one else is home. Goro lowers his plastic bags and puts them aside. He says, "Xuexia, what's wrong?"

She doesn't look up at him, so he has to decide whether to wait for her to speak or try to comfort her. Either choice is a loaded gun.

Goro's never been any good at this. Even now he's like a fish out of water.

He says, "That looks like it hurt. I'll get my First Aid kit and come back down," and picking up his supplies, steps past her on the stairwell and enters the apartment in silence.

The fridge is here. The drawer where they keep their necessities is over there. The First Aid kit is in the bathroom. Naturally. He goes in and goes out, and Xuexia is now hobbling down the stairs and trying to escape.

"What are you doing?" Goro says without thinking. "Come back here. You're making it worse."

She glares at him with teary eyes, make a vulgar sign with her fingers. "Don't tell Mom!"

"I'm not going to tell anyone," he says, softening his voice. "But people are going to find out sooner or later. How are you going to clean that knee by yourself?"

"It doesn't hurt," Xuexia says, holding all her weight on her good leg. "I'll just use a band-aid."

"Come inside," Goro says. "I still have some orange juice left over."

* * *

One cleaned and bandaged knee later, Xuexia sits on the edge of the bed watching a cartoon on the crappy little TV that came with the apartment and Goro is about to take out the garbage with the bloodied cotton swabs when the door opens and Yusuke comes in with his bag of art supplies slung over one shoulder, sees Xuexia, and says, "Oh!"

"Hi, Yusei," Xuexia says without looking. Whether she can't say Yusuke's name properly or just wants to tease him none of them know, but it's stuck and now the whole family calls him that. "Did you bring ice cream?"

"I would if I had known," Yusuke says, giving Goro a glance. Goro shrugs. "Pardon me, but is your knee alright?"

"I fell off a bike." 

"Well, you're welcome to stay until your family calls, but - " Yusuke looks like he wants to say something. He puts his bag down in a chair. "Darling, may we?"

"Balcony. Yes," Goro says, and goes out first. Yusuke follows, and shuts the door behind them.

Then they kiss, because this is a kind of ritual too, and the sun is at their sides.

"A bike, hm?" Yusuke says right after.

Goro flushes. "Please. I've never been good with children. You're more likely to get the truth out of her than I am."

"That doesn't have to be a terrible thing. We're not her parents."

"So?"

"Let her watch a few more cartoons. And let _me_ make dinner."

His arms loop around Goro's waist. Their foreheads touch. Goro says, "I bought the ingredients you wanted. And - "

"And?" Yusuke says with his eyes closed.

"We're leaving again." He's a little breathless. "Don't you ever get sick of it?"

"We have everything set up in Guilin already," his husband murmurs. "We can't back out of it now."

"Since when were you so practical?" Goro says, and regrets it at once.

Yusuke isn't offended, however. He merely studies Goro with his calm gaze. "You never used to be such a homebody."

"I never used to be a lot of things. A writer, for instance, or a traveller, or someone who used to care about - "

"Family?"

Goro shakes his head. It's always been the two of them, and he's never been ashamed of it or wanted more. "Feeling like I could live this way for the rest of my life. There's no promise it'll be like that in Guilin."

"Nothing is a promise but life and death, my dear," Yusuke says. "Otherwise we'd never leave the house. Remember how you thought it was the end of the world in Shanghai?"

"I didn't," Goro mutters. "It was - "

"You were homesick. You thought you'd never pick up Chinese. That you'd never get a good night's rest again. When the spider came out of the bathtub and I didn't help you get rid of it right away, I thought you were going to divorce me."

"I was about to file the papers," Goro admits. "I thought it was venomous."

"And I thought it was cute. That, and I'd never get to eat soup dumplings again if you were right."

He can't help but laugh. "All you care about is food."

"How cold!" Yusuke protests. "I care about you most. Then my art, then food, then our garden - "

"Me over art," Goro says. "Really?"

"It's a complete betrayal of every principle I've ever been quoted saying in a magazine, but yes." Yusuke smiles. "Do you think I'd be here right now if not for you?"

"Yes. Your Chinese is better than mine."

"I know one dialect. You know three. You're a local wherever you go."

"I'm a fool," Goro says. "With a fool for a husband. That's all."

"We'll visit the rice terraces," Yusuke promises. "And become farmers."

"That's a bridge too far even for me." He tries to step away, laughs when Yusuke won't let him. "What do you think you're doing now? Stop!"

"Then, as one fool to another," the man intones in the gravest manner as he hoists Goro up and nudges the balcony door open with his foot, "I order you to watch TV with Xuexia while I make us all something nice and healthy to eat."

"Stir-fried pork isn't  _healthy_ ," Goro barks out as he's deposited onto the bed like an unruly child, while Xuexia just looks at him, lollipop in mouth, and says:

“Sad.”

* * *

The morning after, Goro's phone is blasting.

Yusuke makes a sound as if his toes are being stepped on, hands over his ears. Goro fights his own unwilling body and reaches over his husband's prone form to grab the phone vibrating away on the bedside table. He squints at the caller ID with bleary eyes, and drags the green button over.

"Takamaki  _Ann_ ," he hisses. "Do you know what time it is right now?"

"Oh my gosh, did I wake you up?" says Ann on the other end of the line, on the other side of the world. "My bad! I checked the timezone, I thought - "

Goro sinks back into bed, drapes his free hand over his eyes. "All of China works on a single timezone. It's... problematic."

"Aw, I'm really sorry about this. Do you want me to call you back later?"

"No, no - " The bill on this alone will be astronomical. "It's fine."

"Okay then," Ann says, still peppy and bright despite the distortion. "I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday, Goro!"

What?

Goro is frozen for a moment. Then he says, "It's not - "

"Is it June 2nd over there too? Then yeah, happy birthday, you goof! Don't tell me both you and Yusuke forgot!"

"We didn't. At least, he didn't. I'm not sure." Goro exhales. "Goodness. Am I thirty already?"

"What's that supposed to mean? Thirty is the new twenty! Plus, I didn't know if you had anything to do today, so I wanted to call and make sure you knew we're all thinking about you."

"Ann," Goro says, softening. "You didn't have to - "

Then.

"What do you mean  _we?"_

"I got everyone to promise to call you today, of course."

"We could just use LINE," he says, incredulous. "Don't - don't spend money on this. We'll be back in Japan in a year anyway - "

"A year isn't  _tomorrow_ ," says Ann. "We miss you dorks! Is Yusuke up?"

Goro glances over. "Yusuke is indisposed of."

At the same time, Yusuke lifts his head - good grief, his bedhead - and mumbles, "Who is it?"

"Ann," Goro mouths, and despite it being an atrocious six in the morning, his husband perks up at once.

"Ann! Darling!" he says, even before Goro can pass over the phone. Then it's all his, and he's wide open and fully awake.

"Yusuke, you bum!" Goro can hear Ann saying, even though the phone's not on speaker. "Don't tell me you forgot about Goro's birthday - "

Goro falls back asleep.

* * *

Akira calls a little after ten, when Goro is munching on jianbing and nursing a cup of flowering tea, Yusuke having run out of the apartment earlier for an "emergency".

"Hey," says the man's velveteen voice, and even from nearly four thousand kilometres away Goro is tempted to smack him with a paper fan. "How are you doing?"

"Brilliantly, thank you," he says. He's still wearing the worn out shirt and lounge pants he slept in last night, but what does Akira know? It  _is_ Goro's birthday. "How is Sakura-san's hip?"

Akira chuckles. "Still kicking. You know he just hangs around in Leblanc all day and chats with the customers? He's become what he hates most; the guy who buys a single cup and sits around for hours grumbling about what's on TV. It's a real hassle."

"Poor you." He sips some tea. "I hope you've hired a part-timer."

"Eh. It's not busy enough for one - "

" _Akira_." Goro is admonishing. "What about your practice?"

"It can wait."

"My God. You really intend to be just like Dr Takemi, don't you?"

"Mm hmm," Akira agrees. "Except for when she decided to join some high falutin' hospital and work seventy hours a week again. No thanks."

"You're terrible." Goro sighs. "Well, thank you for calling, at least. It's good to hear your voice."

"You too. The next time you're at Leblanc I'll make you some Kopi Luwak."

"Oh, that's... I refuse."

"What, scared? I bet you've been eating some wild stuff over there."

"Yes, roast suckling pig and bird's nest soup all day. It's awful."

"Smug bastard," Akira says affectionately. "You could  _try_ not to sound like you're having the time of your life."

"I don't want to hear this from a man who eats the same curry seven days a week and somehow doesn't have rickets."

"Akechi Goro, master of the humblebrag and passive-aggressive digs at other people's lifestyles - "

"Goodbye, Akira," Goro says pleasantly, and hangs up.

* * *

He tries to work on a chapter, but then Ryuji calls, then Haru and Futaba, and it seems the whole Tokyo gang's determined to render his working day futile so Goro gives up some time past noon and perfects the art of no-handed phone use as he's plucking a rooster raw for lunch.

Granny Li eyes him as she washes spinach in a bowl of cold water. "You're popular today. What's the occasion?"

Makoto's just hung up. "It's my birthday," Goro says. "So everyone's been calling me, and - "

He stops, because her eyes widen and round, and she says, outraged, "And why didn't you tell me? We have to make longevity noodles now!"

"Let's not," Goro says. "We already have everything set out - "

"Absurd," Granny says. "Put the damn chicken down and get me some flour. No - Donglei!" she calls out. "Get over here!"

* * *

Yusuke always has masterful timing, arriving home just as lunch is being set up, but this time he's trying to hide a stuffed bag behind him as he hurries upstairs first. Goro, art of grace, pretends he doesn't see a thing.

"Now," Granny Li says as he stares into a bowl of long white noodles, "eat!"

Goro takes his first bite, and cuts the noodles with his teeth. This turns out to be a poorly thought out action, and is widely considered by everyone present to be bad luck.

Lunch passes without too much catastrophe after that, and then a higher power conspires to distract Goro further with a call from Hifumi that lasts half an hour. Plus, Yusuke's locked the door to their place. This is not funny.

Goro is about to jimmy the lock when it swings open of its own accord and a flushed and panting Yusuke says, "Darling, you're here!"

He's blocking the entrance. For all the miniscule inch of difference in height between them, when he's in a conspiring mood Yusuke acquires the posture of a giant.

"Darling," Goro says too, pressing two fingers to his husband's collarbone and pushing him back. "I've  _been_ here all day."

And then he sees.

Their apartment - all measly two hundred square feet of it - has been decorated, red paper banners strung up from wall to wall. A scroll of calligraphy three feet long hangs from the balcony door, writ in Chinese the characters for loyalty, bravery, respect.

Paper lanterns hang from the ceiling fan. On the bed lies a rectangular gift in red packaging, a gold ribbon.

Twenty-year-old Goro would have blushed. Thirty-year-old Goro smiles and says, "You didn't have to."

"Nonsense. We always celebrate my birthday in grand affair, and - " Yusuke is still breathless, so Goro puts a hand on his cheek and kisses him because really, he's not offended.

"That's because the world revolves around you, Kitagawa-san," Goro informs him, and laughs when Yusuke protests, laughs when he's kissed back and laughs when they stumble onto the bed together and nearly crush the gift just sitting there innocently and doing nothing to harm no one.

This really is paradise. All of it.

* * *

Yusuke paints. Goro sleeps.

* * *

 They're leaving tomorrow, and Xuexia is crying again, this time at dinner. Her mother Meiying gives Goro an exasperated smile and says, "Now no one will buy her candies anymore just for asking."

"Xuexia," says Zhenghao, who is fifteen and living six hundred kilometres away from  _his_  parents. "You mustn't show cowardice."

"Oh, let the poor girl cry," says Granny Li. Goro's already given her their address-to-be in Guilin and their address in Tokyo. His mailing days are far from over, it seems. "Now where has Yusei gone? He's never around anymore!"

"He's... working on something," Goro says. In truth he has no idea if the painting is even finished; they certainly won't be able to take it with them to Guilin, and he is  _not_  going to the post office tomorrow.

"Busy, busy, always busy." Meiying taps her chopsticks together. "What do you  _do_  when he's not cooped up on that balcony all day muttering to himself?"

Goro thinks of what they were doing earlier in the afternoon. Goro's mouth is full of tea.

Goro coughs.

"We... take walks together," he says, because there are children present.

Donglei sniggers. Granny Li tsks.

 _Yusei_  comes down for dinner when the food is already cold and mostly eaten, and he's hauling a covered canvas under one arm. "Ah," Goro says, rising to greet him. "Now what do we have here?"

"Li family," Yusuke announces in his artist voice, the same voice he uses at exhibitions and when there's a mic in front of him. "I present to you all a token of my gratitude for your hospitality these three months. Voila!"

He takes the hanging off and lifts the painting to full view.

The whole family leans in and squints.

It's a watercolour of Xuexia playing hopscotch beneath a weeping willow, the branches trailing overhead as if from a gentle wind.

"You really do remember everything," Goro says. The first and only time they saw Xuexia play hopscotch was during their first week, when both were ill and Yusuke mostly confined to bed.

"You've been so kind to both of us," Yusuke says. "And it seemed remiss to say farewell without bestowing upon you a sign of our utmost appreciation - our thanks."

The table erupts.

"Xuexia, you're famous!" says Jiaqing her father.

"I'm not sure we deserve this," says Meiying. "It's too much."

"Yusei is a famous artist," says Granny. "Be grateful. Xuexia, lift your head up and say something."

Xuexia sniffles, glares at her two-dimensional self. "I never wore a red dress like that."

"Oh," says Yusuke. "Should I edit it then? There's still time - "

"It's perfect," says Goro.

* * *

They still have to do one last thing, and it means getting up at five am when the fishermen do.

"Oh," Yusuke groans, yawning into Goro's shoulder as they huddle in the bathroom together, trying to brush their teeth with the lights off. "Now I remember why I stopped wanting to be a tourist. This is a time only for mice and grocers."

Goro is married to an actual poet. Sometimes it inspires him. He turns around, breath as fresh as mint grown on the kitchen sill and murmurs, hands on the sides of Yusuke's jaw, "Come now, lover. Lake Erhai sings for thee."

Yusuke is wide awake after that, and begging Goro to repeat what he just said. But no, the moment's passed, and Goro is a known sadist.

Granny Li is waiting downstairs for them, and so is Jiaqing. The rest of the family is still asleep, but some experiences cannot wait, and so the four of them take a sleepy morning cab, stop at the market for tea and a bite of food, then keep going. Goro spends most of this time with his eyes closed, if not totally asleep.

Then the cab stills, and he can hear the cry of the cormorants and the lapping of the sunlit shore against decade-old creaking boats. Yusuke is saying something he can't quite pick up, and there's something warm and soft and scented pressed up to his mouth in offering.

Goro accepts without looking, eats; chews; swallows. Opens up one eye, and says, "And what was that you were just feeding me there?"

"Morning bao," Yusuke says, and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (NOTE ON JUNE 5, 2018: OK, so let's do this again...
> 
> For those who kindly commented and kudosed on "Shall We Hear The Cormorants Cry?" and "French Toast and Red Wine" before, these were originally individual fics and a part of the one-shot Kitaake series I planned as "How to Lean into Paradise"... BUT the thought of someone clicking on my profile one day and seeing a bazillion P5 fics only to discover half of them belonged to this one AU alone kind of bugged me! I like to keep my bibliography clean and things simple! Plus... I live for validation as most authors do, and I enjoy seeing the hits rack up cumulatively. 
> 
> Nothing else has changed. So please, keep enjoying this fic and AU, and keep commenting and kudos!!)
> 
> Aw, doesn't this story just make you feel all snuggly and warm inside?
> 
> Well, get ready for more because over the next few months I am going to single-handedly double the Akechi Goro/Kitagawa Yusuke tag on AO3 and y'all 20 of you Akekita/Kitaake fans better be motherfuckin' ready.
> 
> In all seriousness, this is the first in a series of non-chronological one-shots and very short fics I have planned for a series called "How to Lean Into Paradise", which is simply a no-powers slice-of-life AU where Goro and Yusuke meet as younguns, date and eventually get married, and have small sweet adventures together. This first story is atypical because they're so far off from everyone else, but needless to say the PT will be more involved later on!
> 
> I can't promise any steady updates since Second Chances is still going on, and this is just a way to not have to think about plot for a while lol. Maybe expect a fic every 2-3 weeks for now?
> 
> Next time: Yusuke's holding his first exhibition out of Japan, and it's in the LOUVRE!! Goro is determined for everything to go right; unfortunately, few things ever do. They meet Ann for the first time in a year, who's making perfume now. Goro speaks French.
> 
> If you enjoyed the fic please comment & kudos... and spread the Word of Kitaake, please. My life depends on it!


	2. French Toast and Red Wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yusuke Kitagawa is a successful painter suffering from imposter syndrome, especially when at the tender age of twenty-three he's invited to host his first exhibition abroad at the Louvre. Fortunately, his husband Goro is there to ensure everything goes perfectly - and so are his friends to give him support and advice, both in spirit and in show.
> 
> (OR: in a more sparkling, more polished world, Yusuke Kitagawa is a young artist who fears his own skyrocketing fame, and Goro Akechi is his overworked but encouraging detective husband. They've been married for a year, they're doing very well for themselves, and they're in Paris. What else is there?)

"Now repeat after me:  _enchanté_."

" _Enchanté_ ," Yusuke says, though he can never get his tongue to curl around the word the way Goro’s does, crisp and fluent and vaguely sensual. It's lovely. Everything Goro does is lovely, especially when his mouth is pursed as he fiddles with Yusuke's tie to get it as store display perfect as possible. He'd insisted they both wear suits for the occasion, and seeing the gleam of expectation in his eyes, only a fool would have dared disagree.

After all, it's Yusuke's first exhibition outside of Japan, and it's in the Louvre.

Imagine that. To be twenty-three, and married, and so blessed - Yusuke doesn't count his good fortunes in the day anymore for fear the gods have over allocated him. He's not in the mood to ever give them back.

Nor the one who is now frowning over Yusuke’s pocket square and no doubt wondering if they chose the right shade to go with the colour of his dress shirt (azure versus Egyptian blue. It's all very complicated). Goro is more serious about Yusuke's exhibitions than he is, perhaps because he always has to take time off work to support him. Usually it's only a day, but alas they're in Paris, and this time it was a week. All of Japan must despise him at the moment for taking their Detective Prince away from them. Well, who cares what they think. They're in  _France_.

It could be a vacation, if Goro will let him be. Yusuke thinks about touching his hair - it's nicer than usual, glossy with a shine that casts it almost golden in the bright light of the dressing room. Goro is not quite muttering something under his breath.

"You know," Yusuke says. "With all the French you've been practicing I'm sure you'd like to show it off. Do I really need to memorize my half a dozen words as well...?"

It provokes Goro, just as expected. His eyes, garnet in some light, hazel in others, widen in perfect outrage. "Of  _course_ ," he says. "It would be scandalous if I spoke for you the whole night. You're the one everyone wants to see tonight."

"My love, I do have a translator." Elisa Murakami-san, or Mademoiselle Murakami, as Goro calls her, has been a tremendous help throughout the set up and prep so far. She's not only helped them communicate with the museum directors and staff, but was responsible for booking their suite at the Hôtel de Crillon and other arrangements for when there is time to be idle and enjoy oneself.

Such luxury as they've lived in for the past few days is unimaginable to most of their friends, save Haru and perhaps Ann on a very good day. Just this morning Yusuke dined on French toast with fresh cream and blueberries and strawberries so sweet and bursting with juice they might have been harvested by literal angels. He had also worn a bathrobe with nothing on beneath, and lounged on the plush sofa with his bare feet on the ottoman, and felt, impishly, as if he belonged.

It's a far cry from his former room in the atelier, or even the modest 2LDK he lived in with Goro for a few years, when both were in college and all their hopes and dreams had nestled under the kotatsu in winter, small and snug and safe as their hands when laced together. The house back home contains all of Yusuke's worldly needs and desires - his studio, the gallery, the sprawling garden as large as the lots of three neighbouring houses, their experimental kitchen - not to mention Goro's study where he organizes and sighs over all his former cases, and the guest bedroom that's come of use more often and often as their lives and hearts continue to expand with age. There is nothing here he really  _needs_ , much as he wants for it.

And yet, it still feels good to be king.

Yusuke is convinced everything in Paris is a dream he has yet to wake from, and the exhibition hasn’t even started.

"It's started," Goro says suddenly as the door opens and a crowd of murmurs swarm into the room like angry mosquitoes. "Good grief, is that someone from the NHK? Where is Mlle Murakami? This is very unbecoming - "

"My dear, I have my lines," Yusuke assures him. "And I do remember them.  _Bonjour. Je m'appelle. Comment ça va. Enchanté. Et cetera_."

"You mean  _au revoir_ ," Goro says, softening up nonetheless. He can't help but be pleased whenever Yusuke takes one of his lessons to heart. "Perhaps it's time, then."

He lets his hands drop to his sides. It's been a long time since he wore gloves to hide them, to detach himself from the world - and believe me, it made hand holding something of a strange ordeal in the first few months of their relationship. All Yusuke's ever wanted in life was to hold someone, and be held, and when he found someone he wanted it from more than anyone else, it just happened to be a bright-eyed teenage TV sensation with a pearlescent smile and posture as jumpy as a spider whenever anyone got more than handshake-level close.

Goro no longer jumps, but even now when a stranger pats him on the shoulder or arm to get his attention he wears a look of faint distaste, as if they've revealed a speck of miso paste in their teeth or spit out gum on the floor in front of him.

Yusuke gets to be cosseted for free. Goro's former fans would murder him with gladness in their hearts.

(Not all of them are  _former_. But the Detective Prince as a persona is no more. Goro is as much a public hermit as one can be in this day and age, and meanwhile Yusuke's star keeps ascending. It's still odd, being the better known half of their pair. It seldom feels right even on nights like this.)

"Kitagawa-san! Akechi-san! There you are!" says a familiar voice, and there Murakami-san is squeezing through the door, her glasses crooked. They both turn to face her, and Yusuke taps a finger on his temple for show. He gets his point across. She fixes her glasses without missing a beat and smiles. "Kitagawa-san, is your speech ready?"

Yusuke hums in affirmative.

"I have a spare copy," Goro says to Murakami-san. "Actually, I have five copies."

"In case anything goes wrong. Ye - es," she says in her slightly accented Japanese. "Well, come this way, please. Everyone is so eager to finally meet you."

Meet  _him_. As if his paintings aren't the ones on display, but him. Yusuke should be offended to be treated like a celebrity.

Once, he would have. Now something like the seed of a laugh grows in his belly and blossoms towards his throat. Goro follows, elegance himself in black and Indian red and carmine.

Everything will be just fine. Yusuke is sure of it.

* * *

Opportunity is a fickle thing, and Yusuke is not one to look gift horses in the mouth. When the call from his agent came nearly a year ago, however, he dismissed it on the sheer ludicrousness of what was being offered. Yes, he was doing very well for himself in Japan. A few of his works had been shipped abroad for public viewing, though never in large quantities. He'd had a book of his paintings and thoughts published a while back, which had easily been the most thrilling moment of his life until the wedding, and seeing Goro in his red and gold hakama. They'd gone to Korea for the honeymoon to make up for the kimchi jjigae incident in Seoul, his poor beloved's constitution, and -

The point was, Yusuke had a fairly honest estimation of where he stood in his career at this period and time, and being invited to host his works at a two-month exhibit at the Louvre for a series called the Young Masters wasn't it. Most artists had to  _die_  before they were allowed such privilege.

So naturally, his agent called back at a time where she knew Goro would be home, and his husband marched up to the second floor and wrenched open the door to the studio and said, "Kitagawa Yusuke, what do you think you're doing?"

Luckily Yusuke had only been cleaning his brushes, or he might have been reproving right back. As it was, Goro scowled with his phone in his hand and said, "Kuramochi-san said the Louvre wants you for an exhibition, and you hung up on her?"

He should have known. Kuramochi-san was quite the busybody. "Yes, it seems fanciful, doesn't it?"

"It's real," said Goro. "She wouldn't waste your time with a prank call." He frowned. "Is there a reason you're not looking at me?"

The water in the bowl Yusuke was using had become cloudy, distorted, grey. "I beg pardon," he said, after a pause. "It just seems all my eggs are hatching at once. How am I to take something like this in?"

Goro came over. "With joy?" he said, touching him on the shoulder. "After all," he added. "You deserve this."

Did he?

Having someone like Goro around meant a regular diet of affirmation and praise. They had been together for a long time now, and so the man understood Yusuke's eccentricities, but he was still an outsider to the studio, his private world. He didn't know if it was fortunate or not that Goro wasn't an artist himself. He knew his history, he always comported himself with utmost grace when attending an event, with a docent's knowledge of the world that extended to saving Yusuke's dignity when he forgot the name of so-and-so and why they were trying to talk to him at this particular moment.

Yet some things he still didn't quite get. No part of Yusuke was churlish enough to resent him for it, but when Goro said  _joy_ , Yusuke thought  _trepidation_.

"How about this, then," Goro said. "Give me your answer in a week, and I'll tell Kuramochi-san for you. Even though - "

He was going to say something, and stopped, for which Yusuke was eternally grateful.

"A week sounds fair," he said, and dug out the paint caked from underneath his stained fingernails.

* * *

The first sign something is wrong is when Goro feels a last minute need to check his own appearance - no, he won't be photographed as much as Yusuke, but it doesn't behoove to appear unruly, even in the peripheral of a shot - and steps into the men's washroom, only to discover a... leakage from one of the stalls.

His shoes are Edward Green - a gift from Haru for his birthday last year - and he'd sooner wrestle with pigs than sully them with filthy toilet water. Goro turns heel at once and leaves.

Who do you talk to at a time like this? Mlle Murakami is with Yusuke now, interpreting for him. He looks like he's doing well, handling the reporters' questions. He must never know.

Goro spies a staff member in the crowd who looks as if he's doing absolutely nothing, and makes his way over when a hand claps him on the shoulder and says, "Well, look who it is, Mister Superstar!"

A clipped remark springs forth and he turns to the interloper in disapproval when it dies on his lips, and he stares at Takamaki Ann with her voluminous blonde hair in a neat bun and wearing a suit of deepest crimson. Matched with spiked Louboutin heels, because of course.

"Ann," Goro says finally. "You didn't tell us you were in Paris."

She winks. "Yeah, it was a surprise to me too. I was actually in Provence yesterday, but when I remembered that Yusuke's exhibition was happening  _now_ , and we haven't seen each other in nearly a  _year_ , well - "

"It's good to see you," he says, and she throws her arms around him and squeezes. "What have you been doing?"

"Guess! I'm working on a perfume, actually. There was this workshop I was visiting that made the best essential oils, and Provence is known for its lavender fields. Only the best for Takamaki incorporated, right?"

He can't help it. "Japanese lavender not up to snuff, is it?"

She punches him, light as a feather, on the arm. "Don't get snobby with me, you. The company already has a relationship with people in the area, that's why. We can't go breaking long-standing tradition willy-nilly, or I'll never get to feast on home cooked bouillabaisse ever again. Have  _you_ ever had Provençal cuisine, buddy?"

Every part of this woman is astonishing. "Mlle Takamaki," Goro teases. "Since when did you become so sophisticated?"

"Since I was five years old, Monsieur Akechi," she snaps back in perfect French. Ah, this is delightful. "Speaking of, where's the man of the hour? I have to congratulate him!"

Goro gestures towards the crowd of reporters in a distant huddle like penguins swarming their young in winter. "If you can slip through the gaps in  _that_ phalanx, be my guest."

"Not in these heels," Ann says, looping her arm around his. "I might end up stabbing someone and causing an international incident, and then where would we be? Come, show me around the place."

She's seen most of these works already, but a refresher is always nice. They get intercepted occasionally, people looking to Ann as if she's Goro's interpreter - and what? Just because she looks visibly less Japanese? Goro's been working on his French for three years now. He's not peeved.

(He's peeved.)

They manage to get away without too much trouble and talk some more. Ann tells him everything she's been doing and not-doing the past year - the Year of Ann, she says proudly. It's been long since time for her to move past modelling, so goodbye to shoots for  _ray_  and  _nonno_  and hello to business meetings and consultations and endless fabric sampling. "I never realised Mom and Dad had it so hard," she says. "I guess when I was a teenager it was easy for me to think they were jet setting because they could. Like you could just delegate everything to your employees, and the only thing a CEO had to do was sit in some fancy office and drink fancier coffee." She darts a smile at Goro, and under her immaculate foundation lies the faintest hint of a shadow under her eyes. "Fool me twice, huh?"

Goro's been a workaholic since he was fifteen. A leisurely high school life was never in his court, much less the idea that things would only get complicated and he have to worry about the bills past college. Still, he doesn't know Ann's world, as she doesn't know his. And so he says, "Would you take it back if you could?"

"You mean try something else?" She hums. "It's not like I couldn't have continued modelling. It was fun, even if I was never going to be in Vogue or anything like that. With my height and face, I was never getting onto the runway either. It's just, unless you're one of the big shots, you'll always be relying on other people to book you. Everything depends on how good you look and if you go well with the current trend, and after a certain age, you're going to have crow's lines no matter what, and if you're thirty-five and competing with sixteen-year-olds for an editorial - well, you know how it goes."

"It must have been frustrating."

"Was it?" says Ann. "I always knew I was going to work with my parents, even when I was at Bunka. I definitely had an easier time of it than my classmates, that's for sure..." She sighs. "Why are we talking about this depressing stuff? It's  _Yusuke's_  night."

So it is, and the gaggle around his husband is finally dissipating. "Let's go," Goro says. "He'll be delighted."

She scoffs. "Since when is Yusuke  _not_ delighted every single day?"

She has no idea. "Compliment the 'Ten Thousand Peony Blossoms in a Hurricane'. That's his favourite at the moment."

"Right. Right." She straightens her shoulders and goes forth, interrupting Yusuke in conversation with Mlle Murakami. Goro sees his husband's face light up in shock, then pure wonder. Of all his friends, Ann is still his favourite.

(Of all of Yusuke’s friends, she’s Goro’s favourite too. Not that he’s allowed to say it within earshot of Akira, or the man will ban him from Leblanc for a month.)

" _Ann_ ," he says, opening his arms for an embrace, and yes, everything is going well, leaving Goro smiling and oblivious to problem number two right overhead.

* * *

"Are you happy with what you do, Ryuji?"

Yusuke said this just as the other man tipped the bowl of monjayaki onto the grill and it started sizzling.

"With what I do...?" Ryuji repeated, flattening the monja mixture into a pancake. "What do I  _do_ , exactly?"

Very droll. "I mean," Yusuke said. "Is there ever an element of dissatisfaction in you constantly changing professions? Do you do it merely because something new catches your interest, or is it a self-defense mechanism against boredom, fear, or self-doubt lest you suffer stagnation in your current occupation?"

" _What?_ " Ryuji said, then snorted. "Oh, I get it. Artist's block. You have it bad, huh?"

He'd been doing little but ordering new supplies, rearranging the workplace, and washing brushes since they moved into the house. If Goro hadn't said a word about it, it was because he respected the studio too much to come in on a whim, Kuramochi-san's interference notwithstanding. He certainly didn't enjoy Yusuke rifling through his old case files for "inspiration" either, something he’d regrettably found out firsthand.

"I wouldn't call it that," Yusuke said, because it occurred to him that he hadn't spoken in a full minute.

"Uh huh. Which is why we're eating out in Tsukishima on a weekday lunch date," Ryuji grumbled. "Oh God, this  _is_  a lunch date."

"I don't follow."

His friend jabbed at the air in Yusuke's direction with the metal spatula usually reserved for flipping the monja. "Dude. You never acknowledge anyone during the day unless you're in a rut. Didn't Goro say you'd straight up not even eat until he got home because you were too much in the zone? That's you."

"That was a different person altogether." Did Goro really talk about their relationship with Ryuji? When would it ever have come up? What else did they talk about? Hopefully not his penchant for waking up at two in the morning to jot down an idea of true genius, falling back asleep in satisfaction, then trying to decipher the incoherent mess he'd scribbled down over breakfast. "The being I was at nineteen did that. Now I make lunch."

"Mm hmm." Ryuji grinned. "You know it's not bad to take a break, right? There's no rule that says you have to churn out a painting every day or you're in shit with the art police. Considering how much your stuff sells for nowadays, you could probably fart out one every five years and still keep the house and Goro in whatever bespoke thing he's into right now."

"Must you be so vulgar."

"Must  _you_  be such a downer?" Ryuji stirred the Coke in his glass with the straw. "What are you afraid of. Seriously. This Louvre thing seems like a big get, so why not take it?"

Why not indeed?

Only a few years ago Yusuke had been in a turmoil over an art collaboration with Okumura Foods over the opening of its new chain of cafes. Then, his worry had been a simpler thing, born of a hungry young artist's perception over fear of his vision being diluted by corporate advertising, having to twist his style into something alien to sell fair trade coffee and organic pastries brainstormed up by the intellectuals behind Big Bang Burger, or even worse - being scammed out of payment and having to spend years in court to prove his work's worth. Okumura Foods had turned face since the passing of the throne, and Haru was Goro's  _friend_  - but even so, Yusuke was skeptical. Years in the atelier had made him so, and he was no longer a child to accept all fortune that came his way without reading the fine print first.

Fortunately for all involved, Okumura Haru was a woman of her word, and the collaboration went off like fireworks. Yusuke went from a student of minor notoriety at Tokyo University of the Arts to Him, the one who already had it made, who didn't need to show up to classes anymore but still did for some bizarre reason, and who was dating Mister Detective Prince of all people -

With fame came opportunity, and trouble. He hadn't been prepared for the scrutiny then. He didn't know if he was now.

"Do you remember," he said, "when Goro and I was in Shukan Bunshun that one time?"

"Yeah, that was pretty disgusting." Ryuji flipped the monja with a frown. "What, you think it'll happen again? It's not like it's a secret anymore. People are over it."

Their relationship had never been a secret - certainly not to their classmates at Kosei, to Hifumi or Futaba or even Shujin Academy's favourite after school barista, who had served coffee to Goro at Leblanc for years but oddly never mentioned his friendship with Yusuke until the first proper get-together, as if modesty was a regular habit of his. But to the wider world, the Detective Prince existed in that disturbing liminal space between the smiling, exceedingly humble and virginal persona of a teen idol and the genuine law enforcement professional who dealt with the worst impulses humanity indulged in on a regular basis. How Goro balanced both heaven and hell was a mystery to Yusuke, who on some days acknowledged the sun only because it lit his canvas in an appropriately respectful manner. How people could look at a sixteen, seventeen-year-old who on more than one occasion had draped a white sheet over a prone body in the work day and think, _ah, he would be perfect for a morning show discussing the latest trends in summer fashion._

By the time the offer from Haru came around, Goro had already left one of those worlds behind, even if the letters continued to accumulate at the post office, the gifts they had to turn away because logically speaking, said he, if you didn't know where they came from you really shouldn't be draping them on your bare skin or using them to make dinner just because you forgot to buy the groceries earlier. He had said it with a pinched expression as if speaking from experience, and Yusuke wondered how he could have been so naive.

Just because people  _know_  you hardly means they  _like_  you.

He never imagined that by involving himself with Goro, he'd step into a world that wasn't his, a world that viewed their relationship and joy as a commodity, to be leveraged for reputation and personal success and networking. Nothing was simple when you were a public figure.  _Yusuke_  was a public figure now, and adrift.

"Hey, Da Vinci. The food's ready."

Ryuji cut the monja into small squares and slid half towards Yusuke's side of the grill. The next few minutes passed in silence, then they called for another bowl - make that two.

"Artist's block," said Ryuji. "Not wanting the rags to get at you again." He raised a brow. "Worrying about fame and if it'll just make things worse. Are you nervous you're going to drag down Japan's rep too if the French don't like your stuff?"

"Don't be ridiculous. My work represents only me, myself and I."

"At least you didn't deny the other stuff this time," his friend muttered. "You know what I want to tell you, right? The same thing I tell you every time you get philosophical and mopey?"

"... I'm aware."

"Then maybe we don't need to have that conversation again. Instead, we could talk about fun things. Like what movies you saw recently, or - "

"You never did answer my question. About your own work."

"Jeez." Ryuji grimaced. "You want to know? Fine. Well, yeah, I get bored. I get bored all the time, and that's why I move on from one job to the next. But dude, I'm not sure if that's going to help you. You've been painting since what, you were three? And you want to keep painting for the rest of your life, don't you? I don't know about being fixated on one thing my whole  _life_. The biggest thing for me was track in high school, and you saw how that ended. I just like to keep going. Like a river going downstream. Keep things fresh, keep things moving. Don't wallow in the bad stuff, don't linger too long in one place, don't twist your neck 'cause you keep looking back and wondering what could have been if you'd just done something different. If, if,  _if_  - that's the word that'll kill you in the end, more than anything."

"Oh."

"Now that I said it makes me sound like I'm running from something." Ryuji accepted the bowls of unmixed monja from the waitress, set them on the table and scraped off the crispy burnt residue off the grill. "That's me. Maybe it's not you. But it could be you, even if just for a week, or a month. Stop screwing around in the studio and go out for a walk. Make bento for Goro or whatever you do together for fun. Oh, and visit my mom. She misses you guys."

"Of course," Yusuke echoed. "Ryuji, have you reached nirvana yet? Because that was very eloquent of you."

"I have never heard that word before and I will not repeat it," said Ryuji. "But you get what I mean, right? Whatever's lurking in your head right now, put it aside... or at least try to, until you can figure out what's really bugging you."

He didn't know if it was that easy. If Kitagawa Yusuke was good at one thing, it was spiraling into a pit of insecurity and self-induced anxiety until he either made a breakthrough in the studio that made the heavens sing again or someone slapped the sense back into him. Since corporal punishment was now frowned upon in most parts of the country, it often had to be the former. Which meant...

"I'll try," he said. "If only because I hate to see your burgeoning motivational speaking skills go to waste."

Ryuji stuck out his tongue. "For _that?_  You're paying. Punk."

* * *

Problem number two: one of the ceiling lights  _pop_. Ann says, "Whoa!" in surprise and claps a hand onto Yusuke's arm. "Talk about bad juju."

"Well, that's a surprise - " begins Murakami-san -

\- then the whole room goes out.

Someone squawks. It may have been Ann. It may have been Yusuke, who looks up at the now darkened ceiling in bemusement. "Murakami-san," he says in Japanese, glad the majority of the guests and media near won't be able to understand him. "Did the museum forget to replace the lights?"

"No, no, it's not that - " she says in a distressed voice. "It must be something else. I - "

And then the light is back on save patient zero itself, and a bubble of relieved laughter passes through the guests. They were nervous.

And Goro, coming towards their group, looks decidedly less nervous.

Ah. He's wearing the look Yusuke's gotten acquainted with over the years, the "I understand this is only the first strike and you're probably doing your best in this miserable junkheap we call society, but you should have gotten your shit together a long time ago. Make one more mistake and I will not be generous in my online review later on".

(Or so Akira once said, when Goro was not there to hear him say it.)

"Darling," Yusuke says to neutralize him. "Are you having fun?"

Goro's pride and self-consciousness prevents him from bad mouthing anything in front of people in a professional capacity, and so he just blinks and puts on a smile that's only ten percent plastic, and says, "Yes! Ann and I had a lovely conversation earlier - "

" _Highly_ stimulating," Ann says. "We talked about soup."

Ann and Goro could talk about yarn for several hours and it would easily be the most interesting thing in the world. It's a crime Yusuke hasn't painted them together yet. Hmm. Perhaps -

Murakami-san spies someone in the distance and says, "Kitagawa-san, I haven't introduced you to Mssr Didérot, have I? He's on the board of directors, and really pushed for your inclusion in the series. He adores your 'Wind Chimes at the End of the World' and 'Flower Spill'. Come, let's make our rounds."

"Oh my," Yusuke says. He didn't think anyone loved Flower Spill.

( _Goro_  loves Flower Spill, and the Last Tiger in Borneo, and When the World was Mine, and Mephistopheles’ Reign - )

"Look at you, hot shot. Everyone knows your name now!"

"Go on," Goro says, his face softening. "Have fun."

* * *

Ann whistles when Yusuke leaves with Mlle Murakami's hand on his upper back (which irritates Goro, but isn't worth mentioning aloud). "Wow. Did you ever imagine it'd be like this one day?”

“With Yusuke? Yes,” Goro says. “I only thought it would take a bit longer.”

She eyes him fondly. “I forgot how cute you two are. You know, when Yusuke first told me about you he said, 'dearest Ann, I believe I've found my perfect muse and the love of my life’.”

“Now that's a marvel,” says Goro. “Considering Yusuke thought we were just  _very close friends_  for the first six months of our relationship. I had to ask him whether he made a habit of holding hands with all his close friends and sleeping over in their rooms before he realised we might be on a different footing.”

“Oh my God.” Ann closes her eyes. “What did he say.”

The memory still makes the sensitive part of Goro want to bury his head in sand. “He said, 'yes, but not as often as you, senpai’. I thought about becoming a monk.”

“You poor thing!” She’s trying not to howl, and failing. “He's  _always_  been clueless. When we first met, he nearly got hit by a damn car running across the street so he could ask me - a total stranger! - to model for him. I really thought he was a stalker or something. Turns out he's just, uh - "

"Hyperfixated?" Goro suggests.

"More like a kid running after a stray balloon, really." She dabs at the corner of her eye with the side of her finger, a move only borne by years of accidentally smudging her makeup, no doubt.

Goro himself is grateful to no longer have to sit in a backstage dressing room and have his face bombarded with foundation and liner and whatever hint of powder used to cover up the late night fatigue, the visible lack of sleep around his eyes, the hot red imprint on his cheek from where he once passed out with his hand on his jaw. Oh, the glories of being a living doll. To think he once delighted in it because it made him feel special.

Nowadays he gets enough sleep, and even when he doesn't there's no real need to cover up the evidence. It was a matter of national security that fifteen, sixteen-year-old Akechi Goro, Detective Prince, always look like he stepped off a runway for librarians, that his smile remain constant and effortless, and that he juggle school, work, and television appearances as casually as if he was just going to the store to pick up dinner ingredients. If anyone realized how hard it had actually been it would have been devastated him. They might have discovered that he  _wasn't_  a God-given talent after all, but some mere overachieving peon who deliberately forgoed food and sleep and these obscure things called work-life balance and mental health to get what he wanted most out of this world as soon as possible, and now.

The boy he was in those glittering broadcast years would have curdled to think Goro now comes to work on Friday mornings with his hair up and glasses on, in one of Yusuke's baggy sweaters and holding a large to-go cup of Leblanc's Mocha Matari. It's a special privilege of his and his alone for being the shop's best customer of the month for nearly seven years running. Sakura-san says Goro single-handedly keeps Leblanc open and therefore Akira with continued room and board, which has its pluses and minuses. On one hand, the man is easily the most irritating person Goro spends time with on a regular basis, excluding the rat Owada at the coroner's office who always botches the paperwork and leaves him waiting. On the other he's almost certainly his best friend, which really says something about the company he keeps.

(He's only making fun. Akira is wonderful, especially with ten foster kittens crawling over him as he sits cross-legged on the floor, making paper cranes and chatting about how he used to run errands and/or interference for an ex-yakuza shop owner who now makes a living selling prop guns. He always drops these charming tidbits in conversation, as if Goro's  _not_  a cop. How fortunate for both of them that he's left his narcing days behind.)

But enough of all that - of Akira, of him and his past self, and people who aren't here in the room with him.  _Ann_  is here, who came from Provence on basically an hour's notice, and looks and acts as she always does halfway across the world from where they've always known her. In every sense of the word, she's a lifeline.

A feeling comes over Goro, warm and tender and nostalgic, like when he comes home late yet again and finds Yusuke asleep on the couch in a well-meaning but ultimately futile effort to stay up for him. Goro always has to nudge him awake because despite Yusuke's rail-thin frame, he weighs as much as a neutron star when rolled up in a fleece blanket like a maki roll, and no part of Goro's semi-athletic habits as a youth can even let him pretend that carrying his overgrown scarecrow upstairs is a viable option.

"Ann," he says. "Let's have lunch tomorrow."

"I was  _just_  about to say that," she says. "Though I really have to be back in Provence by evening. I just took off without thinking because I've missed you two, and - " She stops, a red stain on her cheeks that are very much not the shade of her Guerlain blush. "Wow, that made me sound needy just now, didn't it?"

"Not at all. It's been a while for all of us. And - " He turns to where Yusuke is having an animated conversation with Mlle Murakami and a stout, elderly gentleman whose visage can only be described as egglike, yet is probably wearing a suit worth more than all of their livelihoods combined. "I'm sure I'd be lonely too," he adds, "if I didn't always have someone by my side."

"It must be fun, being together all the time. Shiho can't really get away from her job. So I'm always just... traveling on my own, and talking to strangers on my own. Haha." Ann smiles, but now it's with pursed lips. No wonder she came to visit.

"Being a kindergarten teacher is vital to the nation's well-being too," Goro says. "Don't be so down. Let me show you 'Come Kingdom Sky'. It's his latest."

"I love it already," she says, and takes his arm again.

* * *

"How is your latest work going, Natsuhiko?" Yusuke said, as the two of them sat on a bench at Inokashira Park and sketched the lake ducks together.

"Oh," the older man said with an uneasy chuckle. "I'm not an artist, Yusuke. Not like you. I just do it for fun now."

"At least you're still painting. Isn't that something?"

Natsuhiko gave him a small glance. "Is that all there is to life?"

"Well…”

"I'm a middle-ranking government official," the man said wryly. "You know what I do after I get off work, Yusuke? I loosen my tie and take off my blazer, and I go to a bar and drink, or book a room with my colleagues so we can vent about work and deadlines and unreasonable expectations. I'm afraid I swore off the artist's life when I left Madarame. Whatever I once felt about being a painter, it became too little and too late for everything else that built up inside me." He lowered his sketchbook flat to his lap. "The piece we were talking about the last time we were together? I'm afraid I misplaced it. I have no idea where it even is in my apartment anymore."

"Oh," said Yusuke. He couldn't imagine misplacing even a single napkin sketch. It was all so important to him.

"Don't take it to heart. It's not what you think." A girl with her dog passed by, and their gazes trailed to the Akita's padding feet, its wagging tail until both turned corner and disappeared past a bush. "I can let go of it now. Whether I finish a work or forget it, it no longer bears weight on how I feel about myself. I have other things to look forward to." Natsuhiko put his sketchbook and pencil aside, brought out his wallet and took out a small photo. "Here."

Yusuke leaned in to look. It was a photo of a woman, with straight black hair in a center part and a small smile. She looked out onto the camera resolutely, and wore the white dress shirt and black blazer of so many young office workers.

"Sumie," Natsuhiko said, tucking the photo away in his wallet like he was sheltering a pearl within its oyster. "We met at an office party. She works in the landscaping department. Can you believe it?" He rubbed his nose. "Most days she goes around in a jumpsuit and checks the street trees to make sure they're healthy and thriving. Her apartment is like a greenhouse. We're thinking of getting engaged too, once we can save up the key money to get a nice place together. That's what I have to look forward to now, Yusuke - and I do."

Oh. Again.

At twenty-two Yusuke was a decade younger than his former senior. He was married, with a legal certificate and a ring on his finger and Goro having taken his name to prove it (though in work and public life he still went by his mother's surname, because it was all the world had ever known him as, and he still felt an obligation to her). He lived in one of the ritziest parts of Setagaya-ku, the size of his house and its lot beyond fantasy for most families to even conceive of.  _A Wandering Emperor's Dreams: the First Life and Works of Kitagawa Yusuke_  was on its tenth printing, had sold nearly six hundred thousand copies for eight thousand yen a piece, and still now got him requests for autographs and photographs and words of wisdom, as if there was a secret to what he did beyond a depressing overdrive to paint beyond all else, and tripping into connections and relationships with powerful people via Goro's seemingly natural penchant for attracting high-minded friends. Haru was one. Hifumi was another, and the Nijima sisters -

Had Yusuke ever been left to his own devices, he doubted he'd be little different from some of Sensei's pupils after they'd left him with nothing but the clothes on their backs, a painting technique borne out by years of pressure and hunger, and seething, despairing self-hatred. Not just like Natsuhiko, who had struggled after he left, and lashed out at a former girlfriend to regain control of his life and feel like he had agency once more of himself and his small place in the world. No, an arrest and mandated six months of therapy had been enough to break the man out of his spell of resentment, and now he was as calm-headed and clear as anyone else Yusuke knew.

No, it was the others, who Yusuke hadn't managed to track down after years apart or had been too young to remember in the atelier. So many promising young faces now vanished into the ether, into domestic life or officer workerhood or manual labour, or worse, into homelessness and addiction and danger as Natsuhiko had swerved head-first into and barely avoided.

Some, when Yusuke finally managed to get in contact, were overjoyed. Tomoyo had been fifteen when Yusuke was ten, attended Kosei and left Madarame after he overworked her once too many, causing her to lose her scholarship. She was a housewife now, with a pair of fussy twins, and sent him a box of hoshigaki to celebrate his wedding, alongside a poem that still smelled of dried persimmon leaves and sticky-sweet fingerprints.

                  How the spring leaf has grown.  
                          Once it was the smallest of seeds -  
                                   Now the sapling blossoms without end!

Hers was the only gift he wept over.

Others weren't so welcoming. Some hung up right away, not wanting to relieve the worst time in their lives. Some were polite, but desperate to end the conversation. And one - Kazuya - had said simply, “Why you?”

 _Why him?_  Out of all of Madarame Ichiryusai’s haunted lot, why had Yusuke and Yusuke alone triumphed? He wasn't more gifted than anyone else. Sensei hadn't kept him around because he enjoyed Yusuke’s company, but neither had the works the man plagiarized ever provoked much comment until Yusuke began to make a name for himself. It could have been Natsuhiko. It could have been Tomoyo, and should have been. It could have been  _anyone_  -

He was spiraling again. He splayed out his hands on his sketchbook and breathed in slowly, counting down the fingers one by one, until his heart was still and his mind was one.

He said, “Do you ever wish you could return to it, Natsuhiko? If someone offered you a space to do everything your heart desired without limitation or fear of the future, would you be an artist again?”

To which Natsuhiko laughed and said, “There isn't a god alive who can promise a thing like that. Even if there was, what do you want me to say?  _Of course I would_. I dream about it all the time. What if, I keep telling myself. What if I was like you?”

“Like me,” Yusuke said dumbly. “Why would you ever want to be like me?”

The man smiled. “Because you have that passion still in you that I don't. I could easily go the rest of my life without picking up a brush again, whereas I doubt you could go a day. If I had your drive, I might be - ”

“You’re mistaken. I haven't been able to make a thing in two months. A snail is more productive.”

Natsuhiko began to laugh. “Two months! Is that all?”

“Is my distress amusing to you?”

“It's nothing like that.” The man removed his glasses to rub at his eyes. “Yusuke, you're  _twenty-two_. A little rut is nothing to worry about. Most great artists are still sleeping on dirty old futons and eating instant ramen at your age."

Ah, but Yusuke had been hungry too, only he'd been sixteen. Now the fridge was never empty, and he and Goro ate well every night. The first swell of joy and tenderness Yusuke had felt for the other boy had come when Goro, crisp in his third-year uniform and looking as if he had just been on a TV set, had brought Yusuke a bento he made himself. The rice had been watery, the tamagoyaki runny on the inside, the sausages slightly burnt and the cherry tomatoes unripe and sour. Yet it had tasted better than Akira’s curry, and he devoured it whole.

It had been Akira and Ann and Ryuji who helped Yusuke leave the atelier and find himself, and Goro who carried his water forever after, said nothing of paying for him at all occasions. Until the Okumura collaboration - which had come about only because the CEO-to-be was Goro’s friend who apparently owed him a favour from an act of service he had done her in high school - Yusuke had never pulled his fair share of weight in the relationship.

Now it, and the unresolved question of the exhibition, weighed down on him.

 _What are you so scared of?_  Ryuji had asked him. In truth, what didn't?

The thought of leaving the atelier. Never being able to make a name for himself. Compromising his vision for another. That Goro only entertained their modelling sessions because he found it amusing to be painted by the school curio. Compromising his vision. Worrying about money. If he was ever going to be the one who paid rent. Selling out. Being a burden to the one he loved. Being known. Being successful. Becoming  _that person_. Becoming famous. Becoming lucky. Too lucky.

Yusuke said, “I'm afraid of it all crumbling down on me. I've been so fortunate the past few years, and now I think I haven't paid my dues.”

Natsuhiko glanced at him. “Pay your dues to whom? Who do you think you owe your success to?”

“Everyone,” Yusuke said, “but myself.”

He closed his eyes.

A hand touched his shoulder. “Don't be silly, Yusuke. If your loved ones could see you now, imagine how frustrated they'd be to know you didn't believe in yourself.”

“None of them are artists. They don't understand - “

“ _So what?_ ” The man shook his head. “I'm not one either, yet you chose to confide in me. Perhaps they'll never understand how you think, but who are you to presume they won't accept you anyway? Have you ever known anyone in your circle to turn you away before?”

“No,” Yusuke said after a long moment. “I've always been very loved.”

“So remember that feeling,” said Natsuhiko. “And cherish it when your own heart is led astray. You aren’t rudderless, Yusuke, and you aren't alone.”

* * *

A year later Mssr Didérot tells Yusuke he first discovered his work when his daughter brought home a copy of  _A Wandering Emperor’s Dreams_  from her summer vacation in Japan. Through Murakami-san’s words he says, “I never despised so much not knowing another language but French. I wanted so badly to be able to understand you, to know if you felt the same when painting as I did when gazing upon your work for the first time.”

Yusuke is amused. “And what did you feel, Didérot-san?”

“That you were a God-given talent,” the man says.

Even Murakami-san chokes under her breath as she translates. It's real praise, and from one who who has the power to make others believe it. If Yusuke were a more cunning being, he could use it for great personal benefit and leverage. He too, can make connections.

But this whole night has been for him already, and so he inclines his head and says, “I'm heartened, Didérot-san, but I'm merely a simple painter surrounded by kind and generous people, who've supported me and made me who I am today.”

And here they come now, Goro and Ann, both wearing red and with their arms linked, a sight so precious Akira would have broken his camera out at once and started snapping without care for dignity or etiquette. Yusuke just savours the image of two of the most important people in his life smiling as they approach him.

“Didérot-san,” he says. “My beloved husband, Akechi Goro, and my best friend Takamaki Ann.”

“ _Bon soir_ ,” says Ann, and bows.

“ _Enchanté_ ,” says Goro, and makes Yusuke's toes curl.

* * *

Later, there's a guest who snuck in a flask of whiskey and has to be escorted out when he nearly hurls in front of First Contact on Io -

Not to mention the mysterious swarm of French children who silently march through the exhibit and disappear like a gust of wind escaping a hot and stifled room -

A blue-haired dowager in pearls is telling them with tears in her eyes how Symphenestra reminds her of the bond she had with her sisters in childhood when Ann’s phone starts blaring to KGB49’s latest single, “I Want To Show The Best Me To You” and she  _scatters_  in her heels to take the call in private, the cacophonic chorus of some thirty-plus idols singing in purported unison haunting her every step until she finally answers -

All this and more, and Yusuke is oblivious.

When the night is nearly over and the crowds have long since grown sedate and sleepy and retiring, he takes Goro to Ten Thousand Peony Blossoms in a Hurricane, and smiles.

It's his favourite at the moment, but of course it is. Everyone who's seen both the painting and its subject walking around tonight has remarked on the resemblance.

“Hmm,” Goro says, gazing upon it as he has a hundred times before. “You keep saying  _hurricane_ , but as I recall it was more of a typhoon.”

“It was fun,” Yusuke says, because it was.

His husband wrinkles his nose. “Next time I'd like not to nearly drown in a storm just to give you inspiration. To think, all you needed was to see me openly suffer to break out of your rut.”

Yusuke can't help but provoke him one more time. “But my dear, haven't you always been a masochist?”

“ _Haven't I always -_  “ says Goro, and Yusuke’s memory of the night ends there.

(It's the surplus of red wine they end up drinking back in their suite. Yusuke is peckish and not quite ready to sleep, so they order room service and fool around until it comes. Yusuke keeps insisting, “Say something in French, darling, something incredibly romantic and you.”

And Goro, who lost his wits somewhere around the second bottle of Pinot, keeps saying only, “ _Embrasse-moi, Monsieur Kitagawa,_ ” and “ _Je t’adore._ ”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (NOTE ON JUNE 5, 2018: This chapter was originally its own story published on May 27, but I decided to make How to Lean into Paradise a non-chronological fic instead of a series of one-shots for bibliography tidiness. Thank you to Hinatatas for your comment and everyone for their kudos!!)
> 
> Me, writing the Natsuhiko segment: Ooh writing a haiku here is fun AND it shows how the people around Yusuke are artists to the bone!  
> Me, thinking about all the poetry classes I took before: Haiku... is fun, guys.  
> Me, cracking my poetry knuckles: Y'all better be ready for more...
> 
> Anyway though, this story kind of got away from me, ended up both longer and more moody than I expected. I could have kept writing - put in a closer where flashback Yusuke agrees to do the exhibit after all and has a chat with Goro - but it was getting tiring, and I suppose the point of this series capturing short moments in their lives mean some stuff inevitably goes unresolved from story to story because... that's life, yo ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Well, even if it wasn't as sugar-sweet as Cormorants, I hope you enjoyed the local flavour. Come on, think about Akira the college foster dad to orphaned kittens. You know he would!
> 
> Unexpected fun discovery 1 of writing this fic: creating increasingly descriptive and ludicrous names for Yusuke's paintings, knowing I'll never try to describe them, ever.
> 
> Discovery 2: that in a Kitaake AU, Goro and Akira become best friends who just constantly roast each other without provocation. Friendship is fun too!
> 
> (So yeah, I think I'll be alternating this and Second Chances, because they're so different from each other it allows me a breather. Don't worry though, the trickster from another fixture will be back soon...)
> 
> Next time: it's their first meeting at a glitzy party! Goro is a prideful 15-year-old Detective Prince who's just made his first big case, and Yusuke is a lonely 14-year-old and the only pupil left in Madarame's tutelage. They're put together because they're the only minors around, and while Goro fumes at being condescended to, Yusuke is desperate for company and just wants to make a connection with someone his own age. What first impressions will they make on each other? (quietly playing Encounter)
> 
> (PS I just got a twitter @blackflowertea! Please follow me if you like.)


	3. Chocolate Strawberries and Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every story has its beginnings. Sometimes it starts out small. Sometimes that's enough.
> 
> Or: Years before their relationship bears fruit, Yusuke and Goro meet as young teenagers at the Wilton Buffet. 
> 
> Kindly be warned for implied/inferred child abuse below.

"Are you going to eat that?"

It takes a moment for the boy standing in front of the chocolate fountain to react; then he turns to Yusuke, chocolate-dipped strawberry in hand. His face is blank at first; it stares at him with reddish-brown eyes, glances down to his overburdened plate, then back to his face again.

A smile flickers onto the boy's face after a pause, as if he had to actively decide whether to be friendly or not. "I beg your pardon," he says in clean, clipped tones. "I didn't expect someone else my age to be present tonight."

"Your chocolate is dripping," Yusuke tells him.

"What?" 

He points with his chopsticks to the strawberry in the boy's hand, the chocolate coating still so fresh and warm it's had no time to settle onto the fruit's freckled skin. It's staining the red carpet. Abruptly Yusuke wonders where the boy's guardian is. If it were him - if Sensei caught him -

"Oh!" The boy lets out a laugh as airy as a mockingbird's. "How clumsy of me. Of course." He takes a napkin from a stack on a nearby table, bends and dabs the offending stain neatly. When he gets back up, he pops most of the strawberry into his mouth and chews, wrapping the green stem in the napkin and closing it in his hand.

He's wearing gloves. Wearing gloves in a buffet -  _inside_ \- strikes Yusuke as vaguely gauche, somehow, but he can't articulate it, not while his stomach continues to rumble and his plate of food grows lukewarm.

The boy tosses back his head of light brown hair - short, just past his ears, but with bangs that cover his brows. "I should take care of this, then," he says, lifting his closed fist. "Do you know where the nearest garbage bin is?"

Yusuke shakes his head. "I don't know if places like this have those," he says, then adds impulsively: "My name is Kitagawa Yusuke. I'm a pupil of Mada - "

"Thank you, anyway," the boy cuts him off, and walks away before he can finish.

Yusuke's plate of food quivers, almost topples over. He stares at the boy's back - the beige cardigan he's wearing, his black slacks - until he turns a corner and disappears, and then he swallows and looks back down at his sushi, his croquettes, his strip of steak.

It's all so much, and yet so little where his appetite is concerned.

* * *

It has been two months since Yusuke was the only one left in the atelier, and really, it's not much of a bother.

Sensei deplores noise and the thumping of heavy feet on old wooden floors, and when Yusuke was young and there were many, the constant hiss of, "Quiet, quiet!" before the artist made his rounds to check on their progress was a daily rejoinder. Sometimes Tomoyo said it, sometimes Kazuya, sometimes Natsuhiko, but now no one says it, for when he's home at the atelier Yusuke doesn't need to be told anything twice.

There  _is_  no one to tell him twice. Sensei only has to tell him something once, and Sensei's word is law, so when Sensei is around, Yusuke studies, and paints, and keeps to his room. When the clock strikes six he heads downstairs to the kitchen and brews sencha, makes white rice and miso soup and grilled salmon for the two of them with a little tsukemono on the side. Sensei likes a modest diet, a traditional Japanese diet, and if the flat plane of Yusuke's stomach aches because he's fourteen and puberty has made his voice crack and body sway in strange ways, then no matter. Sensei lives on a budget, and so does he. In the absence of a full belly, Yusuke will simply learn restraint.

Sensei always eats privately in his room, allowing him the same luxury. There is no lock on his door, however, and thus he sits seiza at his small table with his back straight and feet tucked under his legs even if they're sore, even if his fingers have cramped from hours of holding a pencil or a brush and it's an ordeal to pick up his salmon from its chipped white plate and bring it to his wanting mouth.

Sometimes his fingers spasm and food falls to the floor; half a grilled fillet, a clump of rice, a slice of pickled cucumber. Yusuke never hesitates to sweep up the morsels, popping it into his mouth before he has a chance to second guess his action, consider what an outsider might think. Some people have a five second rule. Yusuke has a beggars-can't-be-choosers rule.

At school his classmates always ask why he drinks his miso soup with both hands, as if he's trying to cuddle it to death. Yusuke tells them, very earnestly, that he doesn't want to miss a single drop. This is the point where someone usually laughs at his eccentricities, because Kitagawa Yusuke is  _weird_. He never tries to be, but he just is. There's a reason he comes home right after school every day, and it's not just because Sensei requires it of him.

(That's the reason, actually. But it feels better to think he's a go-homer because he's incapable of making friends, and not the fact that he's essentially forbidden to.)

* * *

Yusuke runs into the boy from before. He's personally on his second round of fried rice with chashu pork - Sensei is off talking to some dignitaries, and therefore is oblivious - when he sees the boy approach a circle of adults, get a seemingly bright murmur of interaction and a few polite laughs - then he's dismissed, and on the outside again.

Yusuke would think it tragedy if he wasn't curious, and he is. When the boy leans against a column with a pinched expression, wiping at his slender neck with a napkin, he approaches.

"I didn't get your name last time," he says. Then he takes in a big spoonful of rice, and enjoys the fragrant scent of chashu as the pork turns to mush in his mouth. Chinese food is so delightful.

The boy regards Yusuke with surprise, then resignation. "The error was all mine," he says in a tone so smooth it could be mistaken for freshly churned butter. "My name is Akechi Goro. And you are...?"

"Kitagawa Yusuke," Yusuke says again, because it's polite, and he's always been told he needs to work on his manners. "I'm a pupil of the artist Madarame Ichiryusai."

"Madarame," the boy says. His face - lightly freckled on the cheeks, now that Yusuke is close enough to inspect him further - has begun to look positively waxy. It's not a good look, but then, Yusuke's also been told he needs to work on his bluntness. Ever since he told a classmate she should stop covering up the wine stain on the side of her neck with foundation because she was far more striking without it, only for her to stalk off in tears while her friend glared at him - he's been thinking about how better to use his words so people don't look at him as if there's something wrong with him - something  _off_.

There is, probably, but he'd like not to think about it too much. After all, there has to be a reason he's like this.

"Madarame  _Ichiryusai_ ," the boy says again, a spot of colour blossoming on his cheek like a red chrysanthemum. He looks like he gets flustered easily.

(Yusuke does not.)

"Yes." He chews on another mouthful of rice. "And you?"

"Me? Well, I'm - " Yusuke's pegged the boy accurately, because this Akechi Goro comes to a semi-spluttering stop and runs a gloved hand through his hair before he says, somewhat bashful and somewhat  _not_ , "I'm a part-time consultant with the Tokyo Special Investigations Unit. In other words," when Yusuke's expression fails to change despite the name-dropping, "police work."

"You're fifteen," he says, because frankly that sounds  _absurd_.

"Hardly," Akechi huffs. I'll be sixteen very soon."

So, fifteen. "I don't see the distinction."

"Has anyone told you how blunt you are, Kitagawa-kun?"

"More than once," he says, and registers the fact that he's smiling. "You must be very clever if you're working with the police at your age."

"I  _am_ ," Akechi says with unexpected clarity and pride, then makes a face - practiced, he thinks absently. "I'm sorry, that was arrogant of me, wasn't it?"

"If you're telling the truth," Yusuke says. "Then no. I don't think so."

He thinks about what he wants to eat next, but when his gaze meets Akechi Goro's once more the boy is looking - no, studying him now. It means that rehearsed smile is gone, and in its place is something else, something he can't parse yet. Blame his people-reading skills; he's learned it entirely secondhand.

Then Akechi blinks, and he's quote unquote _smiling_ again, and odd as something so artificial looks on someone his age, Yusuke likes the sight of it. It's been a long time since anyone's smiled in his direction, honest or not, and he's not surprised when Akechi says, "Kitagawa-kun - if it wouldn't be too much of a bother - would you introduce me to your master? I'm no artist myself, but I admire Madarame-san's works immensely, and - I know how impertinent this request is, but - "

"On one condition," Yusuke says.

He's never seen a muscle spasm on someone's face before. It's kind of funny, as is the careful way Akechi says, "And what would that be?"

"Spend time with me."

Without missing a beat the other boy blurts out, "Why?"

It's not like him to get his hopes up, or pretend that he's wanted most of the time. Yusuke takes comfort in this: that the tone of Akechi Goro's question is mostly shock, and confusion. It's not disgust, and it's not rejection.

At least, not yet.

* * *

Yusuke is no stranger to the teachers at his middle school, not in the least because he's half a head taller than the other boys, but also because most of them are aware of his living situation and just so happen to fit into Sensei's viewing demographic.

(Not purchasing, no; it's a well-to-do school, but not of that caliber.)

Sometimes he's approached just after the bell rings for the last time that day, and he's ready to head home. That Yusuke is slow to get his books into his school bag and to put his outdoor shoes on at the lockers is perfect. He'll be thinking about the food carts he passes on the way to the station and how the coin in his pockets is never quite enough, and then he'll hear an, "Excuse me," too mature to belong to a fellow student, and his gaze will fall or either lift to settle upon the slightly nervous and ashamed eyes of a teacher as they say, "Kitagawa-kun, I know this is sudden, but I'm such a fan of your master's work - and I was wondering if you could give him to this on my behalf."

Sometimes it's just a letter expressing thanks, and gratitude. Sometimes it's a box of department store wagashi, and sakura sake. Sometimes it's a book wanting a signature -

\- but every time, they have no idea what they're asking of him, what they want him to do, what a fourteen-year-old boy can do for them.

Yusuke is obedient to a fault. He smiles and dips his head in a bow. "I'd be glad to give him your regards, Sensei."

The other students find him an oddity at best and a future hikikomori at worst, but the teachers - well, the teachers always think highly of Kitagawa Yusuke, the last pupil of that old master Madarame Ichiryusai, but never the least.

Yusuke takes whatever gift is offered with both hands and bows again, this time from the waist. The day after he returns with affirmation ("Sensei thought your letter was absolutely wonderful." He never read it.), compliments ("He enjoyed the daifuku with ocha and said he never had better." In truth Yusuke had eaten it all at a park two stations away, his teeth sore from chewing on so much mochi when he'd finished the box, his stomach  _full for once_  - ), and sheer blanket dishonesty ("Sensei doesn't usually autograph books, but for you, he...."). The teachers are happy, and if the fact that they're kinder marking his next assignment makes his stomach churn a little in guilt, well, he tries not to let it bother him. He means to study more than he does, but it's hard to juggle his homework with his painting, especially since Sensei only checks in on him for the latter. If Yusuke gets good grades, then,  _good_. But that's not what he's here for, not why Sensei raised him, why he continues to let him stay at the atelier even though Yusuke's work is still so unrefined and immature. Sensei discards Yusuke's old paintings for his own good, so he doesn't linger on what didn't work and can steamroll right ahead on what does. If it means he can barely retain a memory of his own bibliography, then so be it. There's no time like the present, not if you're Kitagawa Yusuke and the last pupil of Madarame Ichiryusai, Japan's greatest living painter, and Yusuke's adoptive father.

* * *

"Goodness," says Akechi Goro who is altogether too much like Yusuke's teachers despite his youth, the lack of shame he carries in his bearing despite  _their_  surplus. "You certainly do take it in."

Yusuke's plate is stacked with dumplings at the moment, boiled and steamed and fried, and a single slice of chocolate cake is on Akechi's. Yusuke licks his lips, swallows the sudden swell of saliva in his mouth. "It's not every day you get invited to a place like this."

"No," agrees Akechi. "I understand completely. And yet - "

His lips are faintly curled upward, and he's about to say something witty in his precocious way - Yusuke's been told he's precocious too - then his eyes, which are really more red than brown when you think about it, take landing on Yusuke's cheekbones, on the turn of his wrists, on his frame and the slightly baggy suit he's wearing. Akechi looks him up and down, and something in his expression changes yet again.

His lips seal into a thin line. Something about it speaks of realization, and newfound understanding.

He says, "Never mind. Eat as much as you like, Kitagawa-kun. After all, you're a growing boy."

"So are you," Yusuke counters, because to stay silent after a moment like that would be unbearable, and he gets enough of it at home.

Akechi's left cheek bulges slightly from the tongue pressed against it from the inside. "I do have a sweet tooth," he admits with his gaze to the side, as if he's confessing a great sin. "My work, you see, requires a great deal of concentration. Brain power. The sugar helps me focus."

The only time Yusuke gets to consume sugar is through the sweets he misappropriates from his teachers whenever they're in a giving mood. He always gets wagashi because Sensei is a traditionalist, and chiffon cake would be an outrageous gift to give to a man who wears kimono all day, you know. Yusuke is a stranger to Western desserts, and all the poorer for it.

He says, "I hope it's not all you eat, though."

Akechi's response is light this time. "No. Could you imagine? The cavities would be endless, and I, ah - " He stumbles over his words, then switches course. "I do like French cuisine."

French. He's so fancy. "You must go to a nice school."

"I do." The smile is back. "Kosei. Have you heard of it?"

Ah.

Yes, he has.

"A former senpai of mine went to Kosei," Yusuke says. "A few years back."

Tomoyo with hair like jet and a braid that swayed halfway down her back, Tomoyo who sang as she painted and cooked omurice on days Sensei was out and let Yusuke call her  _nee-san_  without fussing, let him slip into her futon when the night terrors came and the house groaned as if something else lived there -

"She left," he finds himself saying. "She left when I was ten years old."

Akechi Goro's face softens. He's studying Yusuke again, like the school nurse sometimes studies him, when his fingers spasm so painfully he cries out in class, or his blood pressure is so low he nearly faints in P.E. It's not a pleasant look, but Yusuke is somewhere else at the moment, and so he doesn't mind.

"I'm sorry to hear that," says Akechi. "Did she not want to be an artist anymore?"

"It's not that - " A laugh erupts out of him, foreign and a little hysterical, and he doesn't know why he's telling someone this, someone he doesn't know and someone who wants - as everyone else wants - to use him only to get to Sensei. "It's just that everyone leaves in the end. And I'm the one who gets left behind - "

* * *

Kitagawa Yusuke is lonely.

This he knows, when he's in his futon at night and Sensei has taken rest elsewhere as he so often does, and still he cannot bear to lift a single finger so long as there is no lock on his door to protect him and the house continues to groan as if something else lives there - 

Sometimes Yusuke wishes it was his mother.

He could live with it if that were true, if she was the one who made the doors rattle at night and the stairs creak as if footsteps were going up and down and the murmuring he hears is her voice trying to comfort him from behind the veil, trying to tell him that it's alright, it'll be alright because he won't always live like this, and one day he'll be happy -

He misses Tomoyo. He misses a girl who was just a thimble older than he is now when she left, when she packed her bags one day when Sensei was gone and told Yusuke, "I'm sorry, but I can't do this anymore," and left.

Before her, Natsuhiko had left too.

After her, Kazuya.

Then Fumie.

Then Daisuke.

Then -

On nights like these, when cold air creeps into his room from beneath the door as if a being of ice lingers on the other side, and Yusuke shudders, and holds his breath in until the moment passes, the fear, he wishes he could leave too.

(He can't. He knows he can't. Because everyone else has family -

\- and Yusuke only has Sensei.)

* * *

In the men's bathroom, Akechi Goro leans against the marble counter with his arms crossed as Yusuke washes his hands and says, "I never told you what I do in the Tokyo Special Investigations Unit, did I?"

"I didn't let you," Yusuke says. Akechi smiles, but this time it reaches his eyes.

He looks.... admonished. 

"I came here on the invitation of Chief Kobayashi," he says. "He's my... not-so-immediate superior. I'm technically only an intern at the moment. But I'm training to be a detective."

"But you're so  _young_ ," Yusuke says. "How is that possible?"

Akechi shrugs.

"Someone told me," he says, "that I was very clever."

Yusuke doesn't know where he's going with this. "I'm training, too. To be an artist."

"Is it working?"

"There is no alternative." Yusuke hesitates. "For you either, I think."

"You know me so well already," Akechi says. It doesn't sound like a compliment - but it doesn't  _not_  sound like one either. He tilts his head, and under the bright chandelier light of the bathroom his hair is almost like spun gold.

It looks natural. Yusuke wants to ask if he's of mixed blood. Yusuke bites his tongue.

Yusuke says, "I suppose I should introduce you to Sensei now."

Akechi startles. He says, colour on his cheeks, "I don't think I've quite paid the tax yet, have I?"

"What?"

The boy gestures to himself, then to Yusuke. "You and I," he says. "We could spend some more time together. If you like."

Yusuke colours too.

"It's all right, Akechi-kun," he says, mumbling over the unfamiliar honourific. "I've eaten enough for one night."

"I didn't mean it like  _that_  - " Akechi says, and then the door opens, and a man in a suit comes in.

Yusuke doesn't forget how Akechi stiffens once more, his slack posture against the counter going briefly rigid before the boy realigns himself into his mimicry of casual confidence. The man says nothing to them as he passes the counter, but then, he doesn't have to. He belongs here, and for whatever reason, they don't.

Akechi says, in a much quieter voice, "If it's not too much of a bother I'd like to give you my card."

And Yusuke says, "Let me dry my hands first."

* * *

Yusuke doesn't know yet what he'll know one day in the future -

That despite it all, he  _will_  make it out, with friends who call him by his name and ruffle his hair when he's trying to sketch them -

That he'll have one, two, three,  _more_  people who love and care for him, who'll attend his exhibitions and ask him only semi-teasingly for an autograph every time he gets interviewed for a magazine -

That he'll be twenty-something and run into one of his middle school teachers, who'll bow her head low and apologize for making him deliver that expensive wagashi to Sensei - she didn't know, she didn't  _know_  -

And Yusuke will tell her, tongue firmly in cheek, that he always ate all of Sensei's purported gifts and the man never knew about those so-called transactions at the end of the day and therefore she has nothing to be ashamed of -

That one day he and Akechi Goro will meet again, and again, and  _again_ , and separated only by a latticework window inside a confessional inside a small church in Kanda, his senpai at Kosei will mumble, a little terrified and  _mostly_  breathless, "Kitagawa-kun, do you - do you feel something between us?" and Yusuke will whisper, "Yes," and in the clumsy dark their hands will find each other, then their hearts -

There is so much Yusuke has to look forward to one day, even if he doesn't know it yet, and if his older self could sweep him up in his arms and tell him how much better it'll be when he finally gets to leave, his heart would burst and ten thousand blossoms bloom from the shock, and the tears, and the relief of knowing he no longer has to be alone -

* * *

"Gluttony is the enemy of good taste," Sensei says on the drive home that night, Akechi's business card thick and solid in the pocket of Yusuke's pants like a reminder of him, like a promise of something Yusuke has yet to have in years: a connection with someone who wants to be around him.

" - do you understand, Yusuke?" Sensei is saying, the driver deliberately ignorant up in front. "Your behaviour tonight was appalling. Hayakawa-san thought I hardly fed you. Not to mention that child you thought needed to see me - there was no point in that, you realize. Don't waste my time again."

"Yes, Sensei," Yusuke says, and bows his head in regret.

 _Perhaps we could talk again_ , Akechi Goro had said, and Yusuke had thought  _yes_ , and then,  _not yet._

* * *

(Yusuke doesn't know he has a future yet.

But one day, he will.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, it's been a while! And uhh, why is HtLiP so depressing this time around? I thought this was supposed to be a happy story!! (shakes self)
> 
> Uhh yeah... sorry LOL. I promise not every chapter will be like this. Most of what's been outlined so far is pretty cheesy slice-of-life stuff! But sometimes, you know, the emo, it just delivers itself. Anyway...
> 
>  **Next time** : We leave the quiet trauma of Yusuke's childhood behind to... Goro meeting Yusuke's friends for the first time but Yusuke is late aaaaah!! Make a good impression, Goro! Don't strangle Futaba, Goro!
> 
> PS can you tell it's been a while since I wrote the boys? The writing style's completely changed! Expect... more of this in the future lol.


End file.
